Fabricator
3-D Printing technology has come a long way since its inception of using heated plastic to form simple shapes. Nearly every bright household on the grid would have a fabricator within their home which could produce every day items so long as they had the base material and the plans (which could be downloaded from the net). To facilitate the ease of fabrication, many units come with their own Recycler unit, which, when the proper code is entered for each item, can break down the item into useable materials which are stored in the home. The combination of Fabricator and Recycler would be somewhat large, probably something along the lines of a washer and dryer combo that we see in 2000. But it would allow a home to quickly and easily recycle old items such as plastic containers and packages as well as some metals like aluminum. A family could dump their dishes into the recycler in the morning or afternoon and choose a new pattern / design to have for dinner after having selected (purchased) the schematic online. All that would be needed might be extra dye packs if they were running low on a desired color. This would suggest that packaging material would be either without dyes or that the lables for the packages would be a simple, cheap, colored sleeve that could be removed (like what you see on soda bottles today). In this way, the only true 'waste' would be the thin, plastic sleeves. To fabricate larger items that would be too bulky for a home fabricator, you could go to a more commercial space that would show off new patterns, exotic materials and dyes. Rather than buying a bicycle, you could send a work order to the local fabricator shop and they would send you a message telling you when it was ready to be picked up. The helmet, pads, etc. for the bike could probably be fabricated at home using materials that have been recycled. This is obviously Bright tech, but I can see some folks queing up in front of a fabricator unit and depositing old items (either from their own homes or scavanged from thrift shops or something) to get something new. Old coats into new coats. Old shoes into new ones, etc. This would be a very 'green' technology in that it would not only eliminate certain items from the waste stream but it might also encourage scrappers to sell recyclable materials to wholesale fab/rec places for raw material reclimation. Home Use Family-sized Fab/Rec units would be something that most Bright homes could have just like they the spread of microwaves and laundry machines, it would be odd to see a home without one. *Dishes & Storage containers *Clothing (coats / shoes / shirts) *Decorations *Toys & athletic / sporting goods School Use I can see class rooms in the Bright areas having their own 'family-sized' fabricator/recycler unit within the room so that students could either bring things from home to add to the communal materials bank and then print out something which could be assembled throughout the year. *Teaching models *Art supplies? Commercial Use This would revolutionize the production of goods within commercial businesses. Fabricator / Replicator stores could be as common as Best Buys / Radio Shacks with people being able to either bring their own recycled materials from home or potentially 'cash in' material credits that they've reclaimed at home / school / store for large projects. That is to say that if you have 100 credits of Plastic Material 010 at home, I'm sure that there's a way for you to use those credits at a store to help off-set the cost in materials of some large item (bike, etc.) that you want fabricated but your unit is too small to do so. Medical Use One interesting application for this technology would be in the medical field. *Synthetic Limbs (still mechanical but now tailor-made to each individual with a quick 3-D scan) *Bone replacements using some kind of proto-bone material? Protocols Each Fab/Rec unit would have built-in safety protocols that would prevent it from being used to produced what could be considered 'harmful' items without some kind of security access code. Parents may not wanting their kids fabricating knives or throwing stars in just the same way that they don't want them buying them now. Also, the security forces would want to make sure that no one's fabricating some kind of ballistic weapon or ammunition in them either. However, this does not mean that someone hasn't hacked through the security protocols of the units to get past these barriers, but to remove any liability, I would suspect that the corporations would try and keep such codes 'moderately' difficult to break through. Which probably means that any descent hacker on the street learned to do it when they were around fourteen years old. Category:Convention/Bright Category:Convention/Technology